Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

Telegraph Avenue

by
Michael Chabon

I
wonder if I would have loved Telegraph Avenue
more if I'd read it before I read Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins. Unfortunately for all
books read during (likely) the rest of this year, Beautiful
Ruins has become the one against
all other books are measured. Michael Chabon is one of my favorite
writers — and his Mysteries of Pittsburgh
is my favorite book — but I only liked
his latest release. Telegraph Avenue
is very good but I didn't fall in love. Like I said, is my reading
colored by an Italian-gold haze? I'm not sure.

On
the surface, Chabon's novel is everything I love — a record shop,
dinosaur-like personalities clinging to retro things, love,
complicated relationships, the Bay Area. I would love to flip through
the dusty bins at Brokeland Records and eavesdrop on Archy Stallings
and Nat Jaffe shooting the shit with regular customers and friends.
One of them, Cochise Jones, even has a talking African Grey parrot
named Fifty-Eight, who is prone to saying things like, "Say
hello, you little
jive-ass motherfucker."

Archy
and Nat are enduring a series of problems — not the least of which
is Gibson Goode:

Six months prior to this morning, at
a press conference with the mayor at his side, Gibson "G Bad"
Goode, former All-Pro quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers,
president and chairman of Dogpile Recordings, Dogpile Films, head of
the Goode Foundation, and the fifth richest black man in America, had
flown up to Oakland in a customized black and red airship, brimming
over with plans to open a second Dogpile "Thang" on the
long-abandoned Telegraph Avenue site of the old Golden State market,
two blocks south of Brokeland Records. […] Unstated during the
press conference, though inferrable from the way things worked at the
L.A. Thang, were the intentions of the media store not only to sell
CDs at a deep discount but also to carry a full selection of rare and
used merchandise, such as vintage vinyl recordings of jazz, funk,
blues and soul.

Meanwhile,
Nat and Archy's wives, Aviva and Gwen, are going through problems of
their own with their midwifery. After a complicated home birth leads
to a hospital and a doctor who is exceptionally rude to Gwen, they
possibly face losing their privileges at one of the few hospitals
open to midwives who also do home births. Additionally, Gwen is very,
very pregnant and very, very pissed at Archy's non-committal behavior
lately.

Also,
Nat and Aviva's teenage son, Julius — aka Julie — has a secret of
his own. He's been seeing a boy named Titus — who is more than
likely Archy's son. Titus isn't normally into dudes, but he likes
Julie well enough to accept "every last note and coin of Julie's
virginity over the past two weeks."

There was no good reason to lie; on
some level, Julie knew that. His parents had to
figure-slash-understand that Julie was semi-bicurious or maybe even
gay, or what have you. Twenty-five minutes to gay o'clock. But the
confession felt like too much work; Titus was too hard to explain.

Amidst
all this is Archy's estranged relationship with his own father,
Luther Stallings, a former kung-fu blaxploitation star. Something
about his old business dealings have to do with the Gibson Goode
Thang, and despite his best efforts, Archy's about to be drawn into
his father's plans.

So,
yes, Michael Chabon has quite the epic on his hands, divided into
five sections pictured as Side A on the cover art. The story is all
music and passion and making yourself do the things that are scary.
What I really love about his writing is the way in which he describes
things. He finds the words that seem original, yet the only natural
way to describe the moment in question. "Twenty-five minutes to
gay o'clock," being a prime example. Sure, like many writers, he
may have heard and lifted the line from somewhere else along the way,
but it reads like his.

I
also appreciate his continued efforts to have not-straight male
characters. Showing the moments where a teenager is trying to figure
out his sexuality in a very real (and not overly dramatic, anguished)
way is especially good. The grey area between straight and gay is far
too underrepresented in most fiction, and this is a rather diverse
novel, in terms of race, religion, and economic standing,
but it isn't all pleased with itself for doing so. The characters are
well aware of the awkward and difficult questions of privilege.

Also
impressive is Section III: "A Bird of Wide Experience," an
eleven page single sentence that is neither gimmicky nor
impenetrable. When I finished it, I thought, "Now that took some
doin'."

So
why didn't I fall in love? I'm not sure, other than I didn't feel all
that connected to the characters or the story until around the
halfway mark. I was interested enough to keep going, of course, and
it's not as though anyone was unlikeable (their flaws, I understood),
but... Well, for whatever reason, the hook wasn't there. And in a
long book, over 200 pages of semi-ambivalence is... a lot of reading, and the story is a bit over-stuffed.
I spent that time hoping, to crib a musical phrase, the thrill wasn't
gone.

Still,
it starts to come together, and how everyone imperfectly resolves
their issues is neither predictable nor easy. I did enjoy
Telegraph Avenue — I
just wish I enjoyed it more.
I wanted to able to say I'd hug this book's face off, but in
Sara-praise, "That took some doin'" is nothing faint,
either.

Of
course, I'm still going to eagerly anticipate every new Michael
Chabon release, and I own nearly all his books. I will continue to
recommend my favorites of his until the end of my time. When it comes
to Telegraph Avenue,
however, you will just have to take what I've said here, consider
your own tastes, and decide from there. Maybe you will be the one who
falls in love.

Full Disclosure: I received this book as an advanced review copy from HarperCollins, so my pull quotes may differ slightly from the finished version.

#54

This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year. Yes, I'm just going to keep soldiering on.